To Dry Cherries the Best Way
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cherries
Put the cherries in a preserving pan with a little water and heat until hot.
Remove the cherries and dry them.
Make the syrup
Layer the cherries back in the pan, sprinkling sugar between each layer.
Let the sugar melt, then heat the pan until scalding hot again.
Repeat this process three times with the sugar.
Dry and store
Drain the cherries from the syrup and lay them out to dry on dishes in the sun or on a stove.
Once dry, dip them in cold water and immediately remove them, then pour onto a fine soft cloth to dry.
Set them back in the hot tin or on a stove to dry further.
Store in a box with layers of white paper in a dry place.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit that is dried, shrinking and concentrating in flavour as moisture leaves.
- Double refined sugar
- Draws water out of the fruit through repeated syrup soaking and preserves it, adding sweetness.
The step that matters
Repeating the sugar and heating cycle. Each heating and sugar layer draws moisture out of the cherries gradually. Heating too little leaves the fruit wet and prone to spoiling, while the sugar needs to melt fully so it coats and penetrates the fruit evenly.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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